Capitalism and communism are two denominations of the same religion. Both believe in the subjection of man to the economic powers. For one the name of the deity is "the dialectical forces of history" and for the other it is "the free rein of the market mechanism", but both are equally idolatrous. Like the Sabbath, economics was made for man, not man for economics.

James – I love the idea, but how to do it in the society we have? You'd have to have groups of people who knew each other and had some measure of trust in each other, as well as a sense of obligation to each other. They'd also have to have the skills and the means to create actual commodities like food. I don't see that kind of community ever happening in, for example, Manhattan.
I COULD see each local church becoming the hub of that kind of community, IF all of us Christians were willing to seriously ramp up our commitment to our churches (instead of going to the one that suits us best at the moment, like a restaurant). But, seems to me it would have to happen on that microcosmic level – the collapse of Communism tells me it falls apart when people try to do it on a national level. It's only really a community when all the members are on a first-name basis.

The meat of the essay was the idolizing of capitalism . We can do that with communsiom if that as our role of government here , I think James misses the point , idols are things we put before God . Capitalism is not the evil , or communism its how our hearts "Love" of Money or the things government can provide for us , anything we put before God . , It was not money that was evil . it was the Love of money.

I just signed up for Compassion , with money I help that child and family . Now I think that is what Julie is speaking to , live simply , so we can help others . Not to work less hard , but to make sure our priorities do not get out of wak .
I think that was what the conservative talk show host was wrapped up about , she stereotyped Julie into a person who she thought dis regarded the fact of working hard and being able to reap what you sowed economically . Julie is going deeper In my opinion , to work hard , reap what you sow , but make sure you are working on the spirtual things also , reaping what is sowed there also . The desire to help those who need help. Thats the greatest gift God can put into our hearts . Some like me can use some more help getting that desire enlarged , but at least knowing it gets me aimed that way .

I know people from socialist and communist countries and they all agree that, however clunky the centrally-directed economies there may have been, there was far *more* "misery and death" once the Soviet-bloc countries tried to implement western-style capitalism: the abrupt disappearance of the social safety nets the poor and out-of-work had come to depend on, the sudden absence of free health care and subsidized housing for example, cause much pain and suffering and in many cases much death.

Let's get one thing straight: Capitalism doesn't care about you. It doesn't care about me. It only recognizes us as "producers" and "consumers"–who are only important as cogs in a machine of "economic growth" that *requires* a pattern of increasing consumption of everything to keep that growth-engine going. It targets our children and our youth with messages that promote unhealthy, violent, sexualized lifestyles *so that they can sell more products* because they know we adults have *some* restraint, or perhaps because we adults have become jaded from decades of advertising, or perhaps because we are just tapped out and too busy "making money" doing our "work" to stop and pay attention to their advertisements. Am I getting cynical? Sorry. :-/

What I advocate instead is something new that is, at heart, something very old: a re-inventing of the old tribal/community economy in which each person used their God-given talents to do *real* work that enriched the community, and in return could expect the community to at least meet their basic needs, and often to take care of them in much deeper ways as well. "Real work" includes a lot of different things: raising food from the earth, fashioning goods for everyday life, trading with neighboring communities, and providing the life- and community- supporting services of health care, soul/spirit care, care and education of children, arbitration of disputes, and even the story-keeping and conscience-speaking services we might call "community care". But note what it does *not* include: selling insurance (your investment of your time and work in the community *is* your insurance), running big-box retail stores (which basically exist to turn everything into a commodity), marketing and advertising (ditto), finding legal loopholes and/or selectively enforcing laws for personal or professional gain, raping the earth and its resources.

This is *not* communism or even socialism. It does not rely on a central Big Brother figure to redistribute wealth. In fact, it does not "redistribute" wealth at all. It leaves wealth where it belongs: among those who did the hard work of cultivating it in the first place. This is also not capitalism. It does not equate the ability to own and manipulate capital with "success" in the economy, and certainly not with the ability to provide a decent life for oneself and one's family.

So call it post-capitalism, post-socialism, post-western-civilization even. Or call it a new tribalism. I like to call it "communalism." Whatever you call it, might it not be worth a try?

I am not sure which talk radio show host she was talking to , would have liked to hear the audio.
There has been no greater systems of misery and death to such large numbers of people then under the governments of communism and socialism the past 150 years . Capitalism as Julia says has its faults , people abort babies in this culture to make money . But still better then say in countries where governments tell you to .

I am not a free market fanboy & I am saddened by the radio hosts comments. But it is clear that capitalism is exceptionally good at one thing: generating (most of the time) wealth. In my mind, capitalism is a tool, not an ideology or religion. Wealth can lead to greed or wealth can enable us to better love our neighbor. Unfortunately, there's nothing in capitalism to determine how wealth is actually used.

But let's be pragmatic. Thanks to capitalism (which is not perfect), drug companies are able to sell drugs at a high price here to recoup their huge research costs but at dirt cheap prices in the third world. We are able to donate tens of billions of dollars to other countries (yes we could be doing more) because we have those billions in the first place. We can try to rid the entire continent of Africa of malaria. We can bring our best practices to the developing world and raise them up. With another economic system, we have to be honest about the fact that this very well might not be the case.

So, I don't know what economic system Jesus would create, but I personally believe I should be the best capitalist that I can for His sake. Out of love for God and my neighbor.

Thoughtfully essay . Thank you

The Muslim has, at heart, two obligations: to place God at the center of his-or-her life, and to submit their own will to the will of God for social justice within a universal "brotherhood" (and sisterhood?) that transcends all artificial, human-defined boundaries. The true Muslim strives for a single, global society in which the world God has created for us is honored and treated with the care appropriate to a gift from God, in which the basic needs of all people for food and shelter and health and well-being are provided for, and in which not race nor ethnicity nor age nor socioeconomic class nor even nationality divides one believer from another or makes one person feel "entitled" to a better life than another.

Kind of reminds me of some words from my own tradition: "love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength…[and] love your neighbor as yourself" and "in Christ there is not Greek or Jew, there is not slave or free" and "what does the Lord ask of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?" are three (of many) that spring to mind.

I am humbled by the way that this thread of love-respect-and-submission to God *and* love-respect-and-care for neighbor has retained central prominence throughout Islamic history in a way that it just has not in the history of Christianity and Christendom. I'm not saying that no Muslim ruler or merchant has ever been selfish, or that 100% of Muslims subscribe to my formulation of the Islamic ideal, but I *am* saying that their religious community has failed to succumb to the economic and political temptations of wealth and power that Constantinian, Roman, and yes even Protestant Christian leaders have at times pursued with rabid fervor.

According to our textbook, the Islamic revival going on in a large part of the world right now is about realizing that Western-style domination-based economic systems (both capitalist *and* socialist) have failed to bring about their promises of prosperity for all (if, indeed, they have brought prosperity for *any* in the Muslim world)…and returning to a uniquely Islamic economic system. Imagine that: a *religiously* defined economic system! Where care for God and neighbor takes precedence over profit margins and tax exemptions and personal preferences about private versus public health care.

I wonder, if we set about defining a "uniquely Christian economic system" that upheld all of the teachings of Christ and the Jewish prophets and took seriously our stewardship of God's creation…what would *that* look like? WWJD?